Le lai du rossignol par Marie de France

Synopsis: A woman married a hateful man for whom she was ill suited and found that she really loved a next-door neighbor -- an impossible love.  The two talk on the balcony each night, but the trips to the window frustrate her jealous husband.  She explains to him that she is drawn there each evening to listen to the beautiful song of the nightingale.  He reacts by capturing and breaking the neck of the bird and hatefully throws it at her.  Heartbroken the woman wraps the dead bird in fabric upon which she has embroidered the story and gives this to her lover.  He in turn has a small box/coffin made out of fine stones in which he places the bird wrapped in their unfulfilled romance.  


Quote:  "[I]l jette sur la dame, si bien qu'elle a du sang sur sa robe un peu au-dessus de la poitrine.  Sur quoi, il sort de la chambre.  La dame prend le corps, le peit corps.  Elle pleure a se faire mal, elle maudit les faiseurs d'engins et de lacs, les traitres qui prirent le rossignol ; car ils l'ont privee d'une grande joie."

Reader's response: The precious nightingale was so much more than a bird for the woman.  It was a representation of her lover and this affair.  There is a superposition of the nightingale and the lover -- the song of the bird and the croons of a lover.  All that the jealous husband does to the bird is in essence done to this affair and thus forever it will be doomed to be unrequited love.  I think it is so interesting that the story enshrouds the bird and becomes a memorial for what could have been.  Setting aside the moral judgments one could impose, the story is quite poignant in its simplicity and passion.